Virtual Preserving Our Quilt Legacy Workshop

My next virtual workshop on quilt restoration and conservation is coming up in 2023 - Saturdays from Jan 18 - Feb 23 to be precise. Here's a little holiday fun for you.

 

What do these things have to do with taking care of vintage and antique quilts?

 

Two-step greens?

https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/tap-dance" Tap Dance Vectors by Vecteezy

 

Straw needles?

Insect pins?

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Come to the workshop and find out! 

 

There will be lectures, triage sessions for participants' quilts, how-to videos, samples of repair supplies, etc., etc.

 

There are several ways to register depending on your interests and needs.

All the details are at: https://www.annquilts.com/POQL_Workshop.html

Email me if you have questions.   

 

My next workshop! ..... Winter 2023

 I've set the dates for my next Preserving Our Quilt Legacy Virtual Workshop!

 *** January 28 - February 25, 2023 ***

The sessions will be held on five consecutive Saturdays, 3.25 hours per day, via Zoom.  Various shorter "alá carte" options are also available.  

I started working with old quilts, when my love of "old things" joined up with the discovery of the wonderful world of quilts.  I have met wonderful quilt owners, historians, and restorers, and I feel I have also met wonderful quilters of the past through their quilts.  I have learned all sorts of fascinating new knowledge and had several amazing coincidental experiences.  

And now I have 40 years experience to share. 

Lectures include "How Old Is It?" 
Perks include samples of fabrics and threads used for this work. 
Activities include triage sessions for participants' quilts - find out how to put all the class information to use. 

Full info and registration are on my website.

There are several ways to register, depending on your needs. 

Come learn ”how to make your old quilts sing again!"
And they do, indeed, sing when they are loved, cared for, neatened up, and brought back to life. 

Please share this info with your quilting buddies!

 

 

 

Improved 9-Patch - New Video

 

I've got a new quilt repair video up on YouTube!  This one looks at an Improved 9-Patch brought to me for repair by my friend Pat.  

(You'll find a few other videos there, as well as an interview with me on the Just Wanna Quilt podcast.)  

It's a lovely quilt, in both design and stitchery skills.  The video highlights the decision process I went through in picking the patching fabrics.

New Little Flowers

 

Here's one of my favorite summer dresses.  It's so bright and cheery!

A week or so ago, I had it on, glanced down, and noticed two little stained spots.  Oh no!  I soaked and rubbed a bit, to no avail.  Oh no, again!

 

So, there was nothing for it but to head on over to visible mending and find a way to cover up the stains.  Since the stains are so perfectly the same size and shape as the flowers, it didn't take long for me to decide to add a couple of new flowers and leaves.

A Stellar Quilt

 

I fell in love with this quilt while rebinding it and patching a few torn pieces.  

It's a great set of blocks, each one different, totally fun.

The Exact Match - One More

Just a little while ago, I wrote about how exciting it is to find an exactly matching fabric when patching vintage and antique quilts.  I told the stories of 6 times that has happened for me in nearly 40 years of repairing quilts.  

And lo and behold, number 7 just happened!  

The quilt in question is a 1930s Dresden Plate with what today is known as an ice cream cone border.  

Not only is the fabric exact, but it is a piece taken out of an old quilt and very nearly the same shape as well.  

And there is also a piece of the same print in blue on the quilt.

 

 Such fun!

 

Totality

Back in August 2017, my husband and I traveled to Paducah, KY.   The city shared the happy coincidence of being the home of the National Quilt Museum and also being located, not only in the path of totality for a solar eclipse, but also at the point of longest totality.  Perfect!

Soon after, I posted the story of the journey and the marvels of viewing a total eclipse.

And now, quite a few years later, I've completed a quilt to commemorate the magic and beauty of the eclipse.

Hawaiian Quilt

The category "Hawaiian quilt" probably conjures up the well-known style of quilt developed in Hawaii.  These quilts use two large pieces of solid-color fabric.  One piece is folded like a paper snowflake, cut in an intricate botanical pattern, carefully unfolded onto the base fabric, and appliquéd down.  Then, it is quilted in parallel lines that echo the shapes of the appliqué.  

 

This quilt was made in Hawaii, as the machine embroidered label tells us, but varies from this famous design style.  

The Exact Match

Finding just the right fabrics to restore a vintage or antique quilt can be a challenge.  The chances of The Exact Match are slim.  It's almost always about finding fabrics that blend in as unobtrusively as possible.  This is true whether using vintage or modern reproductions.

Sometimes fabrics that blend perfectly into the existing set of fabrics seem to fall into my lap, but sometimes a lengthy search ends up with settling for the better of several options.  

My restoration of this Lone Star quilt (1930s) serves as an example of the fabric search stage of quilt restoration.  I found these two potential greens at Reproduction Fabrics, my favorite source.  (I have no affiliation....)  One lacked the orange accent in the original fabric, and the other had a red accent, maybe too bright.

Video Skills Update

My January blog post on developing video skills for workshop teaching and YouTube outreach is in need of updating already! 

1.
I splurged (lucked into a sale!) on a great ring-light designed specifically for filming top-down demos.  I'm glad I waited until I'd done some filming without much investment past my DIY equipment.  That way, I knew what my situation and video goals needed. 

Double Wedding Ring Times Two

A customer sent me two Double Wedding Ring quilts made by her grandmother.  She asked if I could take pieces off of the more “loved up” quilt (great words!) and use them to restore the less damaged one.  The quilts were both totally scrappy.  Some fabrics appeared in both quilts, but not all.  This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to try that scenario! 

The owner told me:
My grandmother... used my mom's little dresses and probably her sisters' dresses also. My grandmother had 5 girls.

Memory Quilt

 

Here is why people treasure quilts.  This quilt holds so many loving memories, symbolizes such a great story, and inspired this beautiful essay.  (Notes and photos on the repair process follow the story.)

My paternal grandmother made this quilt in the mid-1990s.  It was born from love that went back one long lifetime, and love that she wanted to carry forward several more lifetimes.

Grandma was a proud, tough “Okie.”  Born in 1919, she came of age in the worst hard times:  on a homestead farm between Hough and Guymon, Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  She was able to do some college.  But she left early, to join the WAVES during WWII.  Then, she married and had two kids.  She was stubborn, but she had a sweet streak, too.  Acutely aware that she was my only living grandparent, she tried to be all of my grandparents, all of the time.  She lived an hour away, but she often came to important school assemblies and birthday celebrations.  We spent every holiday together.  And I spent lots of time with her, at her old farmhouse.  We gardened, read, exercised, played piano, sang, danced, listened to opera, cooked, quilted, and crossworded together.  As she approached 70, she set her heart on finishing her bachelor’s degree.  She went back to school at an HBCU, where she connected with people from very different backgrounds and took down challenging advanced algebra classes.  She did well until she slipped on ice, broke her hip, and was never quite the same afterward.

Improving an Improved 9-Patch

***
Do you wish you knew more about repairing and caring for your quilts?  There's another session of my Preserving Our Quilt Legacy virtual workshop coming up in a few weeks.  Learn about techniques, supplies, fabric dating, etc., etc., and bring a quilt of your own for assessment for repair and future care.  Full information on content and registration is on my website.
***

I recently did some minimal repair work on this lovely Improved 9-Patch quilt. Well, it was just a few small places, but there was lots of thought and several important decisions.  It makes a good story of how my process works.

There were two pointy pieces that needed patching, and a few other places with some small tears. 

New Skills!

subtitle:  When the Living Room Becomes a Video Studio

sub-subtitle:  You're all invited to my Preserving Our Quilt Legacy Virtual Workshop.  We'll be discussing vintage and antique quilt repair and care.  The full description and registration on my website.  

So.  Running a virtual workshop requires the acquisition of a few new skills.  Well, more than a few. 

Preserving Our Quilt Legacy - Virtual Workshop - Winter 2022

 

You're invited to join me this winter as I share my nearly 40 years of experience with quilt restoration and conservation.

Philosophy
Techniques (includes access to demonstration videos)
Supplies (includes a packet of supply samples)
Fabric history and quilt dating
Storage, display, and cleaning (with guest lecturer Martha Spark)
Triage sessions to assess a quilt for each participant
Culminating in an on-going community of workshop alums

     

All the content and registration details can be found on my website.

5 Saturdays
3 1/4 hours each day
February 19 - March 19, 2022
via Zoom

Session recordings will be available for make-up and review.